The Planet Builders
by Most Wicked
Summary: The Ringworld is gone. The Fringe War had ignited a new Man-Kzin War, the result of which was an alliance between Humans and the Trinocs, and the joint total occupation of all Kzinti territory. Now, a new dark threat appears from the depths of space...
1. Prologue

It was dark and cold.

The void was vast all around the small device. Only blackness and remote pinpoints of light could be seen, nothing more, nothing less. A small section of the panorama was entirely darkened, with no stars in sight – a rocky planet was obscuring them, its night-side currently facing the device.

It was unmanned, and made of some nondescript metallic alloy. Functioning as an early warning beacon, it scanned the skies with invisible radar beams. Should a threat emerge from the darkness, this little toylike construct would be coordinating orbital defenses against the intruder, along with its sisters in various orbits around the planet.

As the inhabitants of the planet below slept, secure in their fortress-like homes, the device detected dozens of signatures, probably artificial in nature, closing in on the planet from multiple directions

It was the time to test the planetary defenses in practice.


	2. Blitzkrieg

CHAPTER 1 – Blitzkrieg

Adam Martinez rubbed his red eyes sleepily, and turned off the sleeping plates. The artificial gravity-countering force gradually disappeared, and his feet touched down gently onto the warm, soft floor.

As he cleaned his teeth and dialed for breakfast, the holographic image of a news anchor was talking something about casualties, bombardment and a mysterious enemy, but Adam wasn't listening. Finishing his breakfast, he donned his ARM uniform, and stepped outside the apartment.

A cold, icy breeze instantly hit him, and outside his controlled-gravity apartment he felt his weight instantly increase, slamming a few more pounds into his belly and back. The gravity was not significantly higher than normal though, so it registered merely as a nuisance, and Adam was used to worse. His uniform kept him warm as he took the few steps toward his personal car.

_Are they ever going to install transfer booths here?_ The thought crossed his mind as he guided the car above the rooftops and accelerated to just below the speed of sound.

When he arrived at headquarters, he instantly knew something was wrong. The place was buzzing like a bee hive, with mostly humans, but also a few trinocs running around, screaming into com-units, typing keyboards and generally making a sound impression of a control center coordinating activity during a dire emergency.

Puzzled, Adam frowned and gestured toward a colleague in a uniform similar to his.

"Mark! What the hell?" he shouted.

Mark held up a hand, finished exchanging words with a huge kzin in a Patriarchy warrior's uniform, then approached Adam.

"Didn't you hear?" he asked. "That's strange, it's all over the news across Known Space. Wind Carries Harsh Discipline was attacked".

"Excuse me?" Adam blinked. The latest sentence could have just as easily been said in the puppeteer language. Adam didn't grasp that at all.

"WCHD. You know, the kzinti colony?"

"Oh, right" a memory clicked into place in Adam's head. "A mining outpost I think, right?" with a sudden brutality, the meaning of Mark's sentence had become crystal clear.

"Attacked? Hell, by whom?"

Who the hell has the guts to attack the kzinti, especially since their empire is jointly occupied by the humans and the trinocs?

"No idea yet", Mark shrugged. "Very little information escaped that system, mostly the jumbled account of a single asteroid miner"

"No way, there's got to be more than that. There's no one in position to attack us at the moment. The Outsiders? The Puppeteers? The Kdatlyno? My grandmother is a more likely source of attack than all of these"

"Yeah" Mark agreed. "The eggheads think so too. It has to be a new player in the neighborhood."

The only though that was reverberating in his mind at that moment was _oh snap!_

It was just what they did **not** need right now, a new enemy. It wasn't enough that the fringe war deteriorated into another man-kzin war, it wasn't enough that this war also dragged the trinocs into allying the humans and bombing kzin almost back to the stone age, now a bunch of new aliens decided this was a perfect time to stir shit up.

"Martinez!" he heard his surname above the steady humming of the crowd, and immediately knew this day was only going to get worse.

His boss, Odelia Parker-Smith, was striding purposefully through the crowd in his direction. Despite her slim 155 centimeters and delicate build, she was pushing aside the crowd like they were the sea and she was a 20th century supercarrier. Her mocha-colored skin was slightly paler than usual today; she might have forgotten to take her tannin pills with all this mess occupying her attention.

"Martinez, conference room number one, in five minutes" she uttered the last two words one syllable at a time. "You're probably going to be on the scout fleet that launches today, don't say I didn't warn you".

A weak sort of high pitched half-moan half-grunt was the only retort Adam could manage.

The woman looked at him for a couple more seconds, nodded with satisfaction, then walked away, displacing humans, trinocs and kzinti aside with terrifying ease.

Three and a half minutes later, Adam was seated at the third row in the briefing room.

"Did you hear the news about the aliens?" the person to Adam's right whispered in a conspiratorial tone of voice, touching his shoulder.

Adam almost jumped from his seat. The man pulled him out of deep thoughts about his career and family. His wife was waiting for him on Earth. He thought that the assignment on occupied Kzin was going to be relatively safe. Sure, there were a few disorganized Kzinti guerilla cells to worry about, but the best they ever managed was to kill a lone soldier here or there and quickly get killed in retaliatory strikes. His wife wanted children desperately, hell she was always fond of little troublemakers. Of course those were a rarity on Earth. An aging, near-immortal population dominated the ancestral homeworld of man. Strict rules regulating childbirth have been in place there for centuries. The plan was to emigrate somewhere, probably to Wunderland, and Adam's work with ARM was going to pay for that.

"Hm?" Adam replied to the one who disturbed him. It was Mike from logistics; he was a newcomer to kzin. Adam befriended him a couple weeks ago, and it paid off; from that point onward, all his equipment was always brand new and in top condition.

"I heard, from an inside source, that the ship-comp of the escaped miner recorded a burst of information right before transiting into hyperspace".

Adam seriously doubted that in the month since Mike's arrival, he already had "inside sources" at any department. But he kept listening patiently, with a carefully neutral expression on his high-cheeked, flat-nosed face.

"Apparently, an early warning satellite malfunctioned and transmitted a radio signal, not even encoded in any way, for any and all to freely pick up"

Adam knew that these sort of satellites, whether human or kzinti ones, usually communicated with planetside bases via laser beam. So any "malfunction" that included _radio _signals was highly unlikely. Still, he kept his silence.

"Anyway, the techs dredged up the contents of the transmission from the ship's computer and discovered a disturbing fact" he looked at Adam meaningfully.

"What was it?" Adam said, confident that he's going to be underwhelmed.

"The ships that invaded the Wind system were absolutely _huge_. My guy said that rangefinder data on the satellite estimated they could use a General Products number four, the biggest starship hull in all of known space, as a basketball"

Yes, "underwhelmed" certainly described Adam's feelings at the moment. He loved to be right.

"Pray tell, Mike" he said, cocking an eyebrow before going on the offensive, "Why would an alien race that has the balls to attack a territory that is under the joint rule of the three most powerful empires in known space build its ships to be huge lumbering targets? There's a good reason why number 4 hulls are not used for warfare even though the puppeteers are not here to enforce their sacred rule of not turning GP hulls into warships anymore".

Mike was not deterred. "Maybe they have stasis fields? Like, you know, every spacefaring race in Known Space?"

Adam snorted. "There's only so much a stasis field could do. The vast amount of energy needed to enclose that much volume in stasis would make this impractical for a warship, not to mention that the larger the field, the slower it closes, and the chance that a portion of a weapon's energy would seep through before it closes increases".

Mike was about to make a retort, but then the lights dimmed and an extremely tall albino man took the stand in the front part of the room. He wore an ARM uniform and a general's stars, Adam noted. Crashlanders were rare in ARM, much rarer in the senior officer ranks. Their fragile bodies made them bad infantry, and while they were good in a zero G environment, Belters were better.

"Good morning" the general said. "I am General Ramos, head of Intelligence and Reconnaissance. In case anyone missed the morning news, the kzinti colony of Wind Carries Harsh Discipline came under attack 17.2 standard UN days ago. The enemy apparently descended upon the planet and the mining outposts in the system's asteroid belt without any warning. Only one ship, a small single-seat mining vessel, escaped. Unlike this ship, most mining craft are not equipped with hyperdrive, so we can consider ourselves very lucky that we have any knowledge of this attack at all."

His gaze wandered across the silent crowd.

"We hyperphoned Earth and Trinoc, of course. Each will send an impressive fleet here, scheduled to depart tomorrow. In the meanwhile, we will send our own scouting party to determine more about this enemy, so that the fleet would have some solid intel to act upon. Earth headquarters ensured us they were issuing warnings to all sapient governments of Known Space. Travel time from Earth to Kzin is approximately 90 UNS days, from Trinoc to Kzin 100 days. Our scouting party would have approximately 65 days within the Wind system to learn everything possible about our newfound friends"

He touched a plate on a device attached to his wrist, and the wall behind him turned into a three dimensional projection of incomprehensible graphs and numbers.

"We have deduced only a few things about the enemy" he continued. "The first is that they are hostile, and uninterested in diplomacy. Fusion weapons were used on the kzinti planet"

He stopped for a moment to let the implications sink in. All was quiet except for a silent curse in the Hero's Tongue, coming from a kzin somewhere in the back rows.

"Another thing is that apparently, their ships are unusually big", he touched the wrist device and the image behind him changed into a flat two dimensional picture. It was now entirely black except for a small formless grey spot in the middle. A scale was provided at the bottom of the picture.

"Told you so", Mike whispered into Adam's ear.

According to the scale, the formless behemoth (probably "formless" only due to the scattering of radar beams at the distances involved) was over a mile in length.

"The experts are still debating this one", the general continued. "The size is counter intuitive for a military vessel. But a popular hypothesis states these are colony ships".

Adam whistled quietly. Someone in the crowd audibly gasped. The curses in Hero's Tongue renewed.

_Another empire is attempting to colonize our space?_ Martinez thought. _Hopefully, they're not going to offer us blankets..._

Just like Odelia predicted, he was chosen for the scout fleet. Officially his purpose was "mission advisory". His real one was keeping tabs on the kzinti crew. Present day kzinti were a far cry from the savage screaming and leaping beasts of the past, so Adam hoped he won't become needed.

Presently, the autokitchen produced him coffee with a chime. He put his mouth to the drinking bulb.

"So we'll be arriving in system from this angle", Donovan, the captain of their ship the _Punctual Fighter_, used his laser pointer to highlight an area on the holoscreen. "We won't be visible from Wind's surface, due to this gas giant blocking our approach all the way".

"The timing must be perfect though", Adam mused. "Can your pilot actually pull this off manually? The precision involved would probably be beyond some computers…"

Hyperdrive could only deposit them outside the singularity of the system, about 5 light hours from the star, and about 3 light hours from the gas giant, In order for the gas giant to block their rapid approach from that great a distance, an incredible precision would have to be reached in exiting hyperdrive. The _Punctual_ would be heading the fleet, which consisted of eleven ships.

"Don't worry", the captain replied. "My pilot is top notch, a veteran of the Last Man-Kzin War and a certified ace. He would not disappoint".

Adam would've preferred to rely on a Quantum II Hyperdrive equipped ship. But there were only a handful of those in existence, and they were a tightly kept secret. Only select members of ARM and the kzinti and trinoc military branches knew of the existence of those prototypes. They were too valuable to risk until the precise nature of the threat is determined.

Half an hour later, they were on their way to the outskirts of the system at 20 Gees of acceleration. The _Punctual_ was the largest ship in the flotilla, yet it still was a small, speedy 15-man gunboat about 30 meters in length. He decided to spend his time familiarizing himself with the crew.

There were three kzinti, including a misty-eyed telepath recruited from Sheathclaws, the hybrid human/kzinti colony. The humans were mostly flatlanders, although most significant worlds were represented. A squat, thick bearded Jinxian, over a century old and well into his boostrerspice treatments, served as the security officer. He and his subordinates, another Jinxian and, amazingly, a kzin, were a guarantee against a potential boarding action. Adam couldn't see the wisdom of adding them to the ship's crew, but he wasn't exactly in a position to argue.

But the greatest surprise was Donovan's "wonder-pilot". When Adam opened the hatch to the tiny cockpit, a big horned head the color of ash swiveled to look at him with four eyes. The height of the creature and the huge folded wings made the cockpit look even smaller. Adam greeted the pilot nervously and quickly left.

It was the first time he'd seen a pierin in person.


	3. Interlude

_INTERLUDE 1_

Under the belly of the huge ship, the raging fusion fire has long since vanished from the planet's surface. What little local population survived had been subdued with efficiency. Some mining domes were equipped with stasis fields, but they were certainly no threat. The invaders hauled some of them into orbit, while leaving booby traps for the others for when the stasis field switches off.

The resistance in the asteroids was finally dying out. The big orange aliens were brave and powerful, but were not equipped to handle the overwhelming power thrust upon them.

Most of the ships retreated from the system and hyperspaced away, leaving a small garrison behind them to oversee the remaining activity. Prisoners were being interrogated, ruins on the surface of the world explored, surviving databanks hacked for information.

Many light years away, forces were regrouping for another strike…


End file.
